1581: The Low Countries declare independence from Spanish rule with the Staten-Generaal’s promulgation of the Oath of Abjuration.

1775: The forerunner of the U.S. Postal Service is created, as Benjamin Franklin is appointed the first Postmaster General of the American colonies.

1788: New York ratifies the new Constitution and becomes the 11th U.S. state.

1803: The first public freight railway, the horse-drawn Surrey Iron Railway, opens in south London. It will last for 40 years before steam engines put it out of business.

1863: Lawyer, soldier, and politician Samuel Houston, ejected from office as Governor of Texas for refusing to take an oath to the upstart Confederate States of America, dies at his farm at Huntsville, Texas.

1875: Analytical psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung is born, an introverted child with two personalities, at Kesswil in Switzerland.

1887: L.L. Zamenhof publishes his International Language. Foreword And Complete Textbook. His pseudonym, “Dr. Esperanto” ("Hopeful"), gives his proposed new language its name.

1925: The father of modern logic, (Friedrich Ludwig) Gottlob Frege dies at Bad Kleinen in Germany. Few writers on the topic have ever written as clearly and succinctly.

1948: President Truman desegregates the U.S. military by signing Executive Order 9981.

1966: Britain’s House of Lords issues its Practice Statement, announcing that while its precedents will still be “normally binding” on it, it will depart from them where justice requires.